


Slimy Situation

by Leopardmask



Category: Hermitcraft RPF
Genre: Gen, Jevin probably needs a break, Non-human hermits - Freeform, Respawn Mechanics, Slime lore, hermitcraft season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:07:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24444049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leopardmask/pseuds/Leopardmask
Summary: When you're not human, sometimes your problems are a little bit... different.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 193





	Slimy Situation

Jevin jumped off the last few rungs of the ladder, landing on the floor of his beacon mine. It had been a long day of building, but he wasn’t quite ready to rest just yet, so he settled for taking off his shoes near the ladder and mining barefoot. He walked over to the nearest wall, and started swinging his pickaxe, feeling the beacon’s power in every movement, slicing through stone in wide swathes like a scythe through grass. Business as usual.

It wasn’t long until he started hearing the familiar  _ thwaps _ of slimes exploring the space. A little one, sensing that there was a player nearby, jumped at him and bounced harmlessly off his sweater. Jevin turned around with a small smile - and accidentally stepped on the slime. Automatically, his body absorbed the little slime with a  _ schlorp. _ Jevin sighed and put a hand to his forehead.  _ This is why I shouldn’t be mining barefoot. _ Taking a moment to adjust to the slight increase in mass, Jevin ignored the vague, blurry memory of another cave that had snuck into the back of his mind, and kept going.

Mining this way was almost hypnotic at times. His pickaxe barely met any resistance from the stone, only catching when there were ores to collect. Tiny slimes followed him, but they couldn’t hurt him, and as long as he was careful he could avoid a repeat of the first incident. At one point, Jevin vaguely realized that he could no longer hear or feel the little slimes thwapping against his clothes, but he decided they had probably found better things to do than futilely attacking players.

A single, loud  _ THWOP _ startled Jevin out of his thoughts. He turned around to see a single, huge slime, almost too tall to bounce in the five-meter space, staring back at him.

Oh.

So that was where all the tiny slimes went.

The huge slime launched itself at him, and Jevin frantically scrambled backward, drawing and swinging his sword. He misjudged his swing. The slime had moved deceptively fast; Jevin’s sword sliced easily into it, but so did Jevin’s hand.

_ Oh no- _ There was no time to pull out his communicator, or even to panic. Jevin barely had time to hope his friends would get a message, before his mind went fuzzy, then blurry, then black.

\-----

**iJevin has been absorbed by Slime**

<Grian> Huh, I haven’t seen that death message before?

<Xisuma> Oh dear

<joehillssays> That’s because it’s no ordinary death message, Grian.

<Grian> ???

<Xisuma> Got his communicator coords here. Anyone near about -700, 11, -100 who can help out?

<impulseSV> Sounds like he was mining from under his base. I can take care of it. Zed, you want to come back me up?

<Zedaph> Sure!

“Whoa, this place has changed since the last time I was here.”

  
“I’ve never even  _ been _ here.”

  
Impulse and Zedaph came to a swift landing in the small dome that Jevin had been living out of since starting renovations. It didn’t take long before they found the bubble columns and ladder leading underground.

“If he started mining from his base,” Zedaph wondered, “why do  _ we _ need to come get his stuff after he died? Shouldn’t he have respawned up here?”

“Well, he… hasn’t exactly respawned,” Impulse hedged. “Yet. That’s what we’re helping with.”

“What are we doing, killing him??” Zedaph asked, shocked.

“You could say that…” Impulse did a slow turn, scanning the area for anything unusual. “Look.”

Zedaph looked where Impulse was pointing. There, moving ponderously in their direction, was the biggest slime he’d ever seen. He thought he saw a flash of white floating within it. As the slime got closer, the two saw that it had picked up a wide variety of items: mostly blocks and minerals, but also some shimmering enchanted tools… and a white hoodie and black pants. The slime also had a few barely-noticeable streaks of blue running through it.

“Oh dear,” Zedaph echoed Xisuma’s message. “I think I see what’s happened now. There’s no way to, uh…?” He made a motion like pulling something apart with his hands.

Impulse shook his head. “Not that we know of. We just have to kill the slime, and then the bits that are Jevin will respawn normally.”

The slime sped up when it saw them, and knocked them back toward the ladder. Impulse and Zedaph started to flank the slime. It looked back and forth, as if unsure which of the tiny sword-wielding players to attack first, then launched itself at Impulse. Impulse shoved his shield against it as both of them slashed at the slime until it finally fell apart.

Then things got challenging. The huge slime fell into two smaller slimes, each of which targeted a different hermit, pushing them away from each other. Zedaph swung his sword frenetically back and forth, cutting up the slime on him once more. But now there were three slimes on Zedaph, while Impulse was still dealing with one. The slimes started flanking Zedaph, just as he and Impulse had flanked the big slime.

“These guys seem smarter than the average slime!” Zedaph yelled, trying to back away.

“That’s because part of them  _ isn’t _ your average slime!” Impulse yelled back, finally splitting his one slime and trying to disengage to help Zedaph. The newly-smaller slimes started to surround Impulse too. “And remember, Jevin’s really good in a fight!”

Zedaph started to respond, but got the wind knocked out of him as one of the slimes barrelled into him from behind. Another slime jumped on his head, muffling his cry. Impulse was forced to turn around to fight his own cluster, but a few moments later he felt his communicator buzz in his pocket. Hands full, he called out a command to turn the communicator to voice mode.

**Zedaph was slain by S̛̟̟ͪ͒͘ḽ̡ͧ̾̕ͅé̷̖̹́͡v̷̸̩̝ͦ̇i̷̴̮̗̎̅m̛̞̮̈́̌͜e̴̺̰͑̚͠**

<Stressmonster101> u wot??

<impulseSV> need more backup stat

<Welsknight> omw

<Keralis1> I’ll be there too!

Within moments, Wels and Keralis were both diving down the ladder into the mine. Or rather, Wels dove, while Keralis climbed carefully after. They ran toward Impulse, who was frantically kiting slimes around the mine.

“Ay yi yi!” Keralis exclaimed. “That’s a lot of slimes!”

“It started out really big!” Impulse explained. “And I think I picked up a few more!”

Wels had already drawn his sword. “Keralis, focus on any slime that has blue on it, or something floating in it. And try to draw as many away from Impulse as you can."

“Aye aye, captain!” Keralis didn’t like fighting much, but he knew that if he was careful, he could keep the slimes’ attention long enough for the better fighters to take care of them. So he rushed the crowd, beating on his shield and yelling, “Hey! Slimeys! This way! Come and get me!”

With all three hermits working as a team, the number of slimes slowly dwindled, until finally they were surrounded only by scattered items. Keralis found one last slime with a blue mark, trying to sneak up on Impulse, and killed it with a final swipe.

**S̛̟̟ͪ͒͘ḽ̡ͧ̾̕ͅé̷̖̹́͡v̷̸̩̝ͦ̇i̷̴̮̗̎̅m̛̞̮̈́̌͜e̴̺̰͑̚͠ was slain by Keralis1**

<Grian> will someone please tell me what is going on over there

<Xisuma> don’t worry about it

All three hermits were exhausted, but they gathered up all the mess they had made and separated it into two piles: one for Jevin, and one for Zedaph. Then Impulse and Keralis flopped to the ground near the beacon, while Wels climbed back up the ladder to check on Jevin.

\-----

Jevin woke with a groan. He lay in bed for a few minutes, nursing a headache and trying to ignore the weird slime memories left over from... had he respawned? He must have, because he was actually thinking again. Jevin started to look for his communicator, to see who to thank this time, when he was interrupted by the sound of someone in armor coming up his ladder.

“Jevin?” Wels called gently. “How are you doing?”

Jevin sat up. His headache was fading, but his body still felt like it was rearranging itself, trying to put him back the way he was supposed to be. “Better than I was.”

That earned a smile. “Your stuff is still downstairs,” Wels told him. “But we can bring it up to you if you want.”

“No, I’ll come get it.” Jevin slid out of bed. “Thank you so much.”

As the two walked back to the ladder, they looked up at the sound of rockets. Zedaph soared overhead and spiraled down. “Oh hey Jev! Impulse told me it was safe to come get my stuff.”

“Yep, it is,” Wels replied, starting down the ladder. “Impulse and Keralis are keeping watch over it.”

“Jevin!” Keralis exclaimed, as soon as he saw the man reappear in the mine. “Dude!!”

Impulse stood up and offered Jevin a handshake, which turned into a brief hug. “Good to have you back, man.”

Jevin smiled. “Good to be back. I’m lucky I have you all around to help me out when this stuff happens.”

“What... did happen?” Keralis asked tentatively.

“I also kind of want to know,” Zedaph added. “I mean, we saw the chat, but it’s still really weird, and you all are acting like this happens every week!”

“It has been a while,” Jevin admitted as he started sorting through his items. “I think the last time I got got was a couple of incidents during the Big Dig in world 5. Basically I just have to be extra careful around slimes that are bigger than I am.”

“If you did see that, Zed,” Impulse noted, “you probably just figured it was a weird death message and forgot about it. We don’t usually make a big deal of it.”

“The message was Xisuma’s idea,” Jevin explained. “I was wandering around a swamp, barely sentient, for days before a search party found me the first time. After that, X rigged my communicator to sense when a big slime’s sucked me up.”

“Okay, hold on,” Zed put his hands up. “You’re giving us a lot of information, but you’re not actually  _ explaining _ anything here. First of all: what do you mean ‘barely sentient’?”

Jevin gave a dry chuckle. “Slimes - most slimes - are pretty stupid. When they - we - merge, what little intelligence is there gets... mixed together, I guess. Memories, too. So when I end up part of a really big slime, the result is only slightly smarter than the slime was before. Slimes also don’t really have a sense of self, because of the whole merging and splitting thing. So the slime is kind of still me, and kind of not, and acting on slightly better instincts than usual, and it’s really just a very, very weird experience that I wholeheartedly do  _ not _ recommend.”

“If you can merge like slimes, does that mean you can split like slimes?” Keralis gasped. “Could there be two Jevins running around?”   


“For whatever reason, it doesn’t quite work that way for me,” Jevin replied. “If I get cut up, I’m just... in pieces that I can pull back-”

“Can you pick up little slimes,” Zedaph interrupted, “and turn into, like, Mega Jevin?? That would be so cool-”

“Guys,” Wels stopped them. “Jevin has just woken up from an unpleasant hour or so and a respawn, and we’re sitting on an unsafe stone floor interrogating him about being nonhuman. Let’s leave him be for a while, shall we?”

Jevin shot Wels a grateful look and stood up. “Thank you all again for helping me out. I’m sorry that little debacle took up so much of y’all’s time.”   


Impulse clapped Jevin on the shoulder. “No need to be sorry, man, accidents happen! You know all of us are always ready to help out a friend.”

**Author's Note:**

> and Grian never learns what those weird chat messages were about, the end


End file.
